Goethe surprises the reader of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by printing this immortal lyric at the end of a short chapter (Book 4, Chapter 11) concerning the recuperation of the eponymous hero from a gunshot wound and a sabre thrust. During his convalescence Wilhelm is visited often by the Harper and Mignon who sing in the background. Thus the lyric seems an afterthought:

He [Wilhelm] fell into a dreamy longing; and well accordant with his feelings was the song which at that instant Mignon and the Harper began to sing, with a passionate expression, in the form of an irregular duet.

For the first time Schubert takes account of what Goethe writes in the novel (the poem appeared on its own in countless anthologies and collections of Goethe's work) and composes a duet. He also seems to have imagined Wilhelm listening to it somewhat feverishly and at a distance; there is a musical haze around this song which is as much about Wilhelm's dreamy longing as the two singers' feelings.

The key is B minor, the tonality of some of Schubert's most profound utterances. During the Vorspiel we are introduced to some of the song's strongest features: the shift between tonic and subdominant (as between the first and second bar of the music, as well as the first and second song in the set – Heiss mich nicht reden is in E minor); the mezzo staccato repeated notes in the bass which give an obsessive 'tolling bell' effect; the 'Neapolitan' key of C major in the third bar which is harmonically distant from the tonic and serves to heighten the sense of distance and alienation in the poem. The two characters are also somehow separated, despite the fact that they sing at close quarters and often in quasi-canonic imitation. They are not looking at each other during this song, rather are they both gazing out into the distance, completely wrapped up in their own thoughts and problems. Schubert has built into this music a somewhat distracted quality, a restlessness which is exacerbated by the interplay between the voices.

At the opening of the song Mignon leads the way, the Harper following her at the distance of a bar. The rise and fall of the intertwined voices has an elegiac quality, a wail which suggests exotic music from a far-away land. At 'Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude' the singers' lines move closer together, only half a bar apart, the canonic effect tighter than before. In contrast, the wide spacing of the accompaniment between the hands is significant: chords in the right hand are high in the stave, and on the opposite side of the keyboard there are thirds deep in the bass clef. This seems to emphasize the breadth of the horizon, or the vast sweep of sky between heaven and earth. We hear something similar at the end of Totengräbers Heimweh, also from 1826, and Wolf in his Ganymed has learned this lesson well. At 'Ach! der mich liebt und kennt' the voices unite at last, and the euphonious move into C major shows a glimpse of the homeland ideal, ineffably dear, but unattainable and thus strangely bereft in effect. This section shifts into E minor as a preparation for the explosive outburst of 'Es schwindelt mir', skilfully bounced between the voices as recitative; one diminished seventh mercilessly follows another. This squall of sudden emotion is followed by a modified recapitulation of the opening, a technique already familiar from many of Schubert's instrumental slow movements. The move back into B minor for the last verse reverses the roles of father and daughter. The Harper now begins the plaint, and Mignon follows. Underneath this, the pianist is required to make a rustling tremolando accompaniment in the bass which adds to a slightly ominous background shimmer, as if the lower strings were playing sul ponticello. The postlude, with a rocking figuration which rises through the stave, seems to ask a question: 'Is there a way out of this tragedy for us?' The answer is not slow in coming. Eight repeated semiquavers on mezzo staccato Bs deep in the left hand give the answer; mezzo staccato repeated notes were to be a feature of Winterreise, notably in Der Wegweiser where they insist on the inexorable journey to the grave of the winter traveller. Here the repetitions underline that these Italian refugees are earthed and grounded, trapped in the web of their sad destinies. A more detailed explication of the background to the lyrics of Mignon and the Harper is to be found accompanying Volume 23.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996

Goethe tells us at the end of Book 5, Chapter 6, that this was 'a poem which Mignon had recited once or twice with great expressiveness and which the hurry of so many singular occurrences prevented us from inserting sooner'. It thus seems, as Capell says, merely 'appended' to the story. What is it that Mignon knows and is not prepared to tell? She does not know of her relationship to the Harper which makes her the fruit of an incestuous union. Perhaps she has suffered terrible things at the hands of her kidnappers. The lyric merely adds to Mignon's general air of mystery, and Goethe has been characteristically shrewd in introducing it in a seemingly offhand way.

The song has a hieratic quality which implies ritual and obsession, with Mignon as priestess of her own cult. The use of dactylic rhythm in Schubert's music always implies something sacred or inexorable – the footfall of death, the movement of the stars in their heavens, a fixed and unalterable given. And so it is with Mignon and her vow of silence. The key is E minor, the subdominant of the B minor of the preceding duet, and the plagal, and thus religious, relationship between the two songs seems completely appropriate. The music itself has a deceptive simplicity with the accompaniment hugging much of the vocal line. As in Mignon und der Harfner, the time signature is an alla breve 2/2 which moderates the tempo indication of 'langsam' and adds the lilt of a solemn dance to the plaint. We are reminded of Mignon's fragility and the vulnerable femininity behind her boyish appearance. After two bars of the melody there is a courtly little dying fall, like a curtsey which apologizes for intransigence, and this is repeated at the end of the next two-bar phrase, and throughout the song. The second verse moves into the key of C major. An ascent up the stave (with the singer nudged heavenward with support, note for note, from the piano) depicts the glory of a sunrise: 'und sie muss sich erhellen' is a majestic cadence made out of very little more than the elongation of the final word but which seems to illuminate that corner of the song with a burst of light. The second and third lines of this strophe are set to similar music, but notable is the singer's plunge down to the bottom of the stave for 'die tiefverborgnen Quellen' followed by a trickle of playful semiquavers as the stream bubbles forth from its hiding place. A tiny yet eloquent interlude takes us from C major to a B major chord – the dominant of E minor. The third verse begins in E major however, with an infinitely touching effect. The intimacy and peacefulness of friendship seem portrayed in music which is balm to the ear. The meaning of the phrase 'in Klagen sich ergiessen' is beautifully illustrated at its repetition: the falling vocal line, each note accompanied by a different chord, tumbles gratefully to the tonic, a perfect analogue for the pouring out of troubles.

The song ends with the poem's final two lines set as fervent recitative, accompanied by portentous minims and semibreve chords. Here Mignon no longer seems to be a little girl but rather a figure of almost Wagnerian grandeur. The dactylic rhythm has evaporated in favour of a blazing intensity and confrontation with fate. The final bar of the vocal line ('vermag sie aufzuschliessen') is a musical repeat of 'Allein das Schicksal will es nicht'. This is Schubert's means of unifying the song after its digression into recitative. For the singer this line is like walking a tightrope, so high is the tessitura and so great the temptation to make a gratuitous ritardando. This final obstacle in itself seems to sum up Mignon's battle to control her life in the face of uncontrollable reverses and tragedy.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996

This poem occurs in Book 8, Chapter 2, of the novel. Natalie, whom Wilhelm has named 'die schöne Amazone' and whom he will eventually marry, tells him her concerns for Mignon's health:

She spoke to him in general terms about Mignon's illness, telling him that the girl was becoming more and more the prey of strong emotions and, highly sensitive as always, concealed the fact that she often suffered violent cramps around the heart, but so dangerously severe that sometimes this prime organ of life stopped beating suddenly when she was unexpectedly excited, and there seemed to be no sign of life in the dear child's body.

It seems that there has been a change in Mignon's character. She now only wears women's clothes which she had formerly despised. Natalie then recounts to Wilhelm the story of a children's party which she had organized. She had promised the children that an angel would bring them presents:

I chose Mignon to play the part of the angel, and on the appointed day she was clothed in a long, thin white garment with a girdle of gold around her chest and a golden crown in her hair. I first thought I would omit the wings, but the women who dressed her insisted on a pair of big golden wings with which they could demonstrate their skill. And so this miraculous vision appeared, a lily in one hand and a little basket in the other, right in the midst of the girls, and surprised me as well. 'Here comes the angel!' I said. All the children made as if to withdraw, but then finally shouted 'It's Mignon!' though still not venturing any closer to the wondrous sight.

'Here are your presents' she said, handing them the basket. They gathered around her, gazed, touched her, and then one of them asked: 'Are you an angel?' `I wish I were', Mignon replied. 'Why are you holding a lily?' 'My heart should be open and pure as a lily, then I would be happy.' 'What are the wings for? Let me see!' 'They stand for lovelier wings which are not yet opened.'

She continued to give these remarkable answers to their simple questions. When their curiosity was satisfied and the first impressions of her appearance began to fade, they wanted to undress her. But she would not allow this. She took up her zither, climbed up on this high desk, and sang with unbelievable grace and appeal this song.

Schubert's music for this lyric is perhaps the greatest of his 'Mignon' songs. The key is B major, a carefully planned counterbalance to the B minor of the opening duet of the cycle. The change to triple metre after the strict alla breve duple rhythm of the two previous songs seems to free the music to slip into another world, far away from earthly pain. For much of the first verse there is a repeated F sharp hidden within the texture of the accompaniment (sometimes as the bass note) which puts us in mind of Die liebe Farbe from Die schöne Müllerin where the miller-boy, like Mignon, faces the prospect of death. (This repetition has the effect of a background drone which may be Schubert's attempt to simulate the open left-hand chords of the zither.) Unlike the miller-boy, we hear no anger here and no self-pity. Even 'resignation' would be the wrong word; rather do we hear a transcendental acceptance of the consequences of living and dying, a terrible sweetness and wisdom born of suffering. The music takes us beyond sorrow and into a luminous vision of 'das mildre Land'. It is at times like this that one understands Brahms's comment about Schubert being able to inhabit regions that are beyond the reach of other composers. At the beginning of the third verse, when we hear the words 'Und jene himmlischen Gestalten, sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib' ('And those heavenly beings do not ask who is man or woman'), we feel ourselves transfigured, alongside Mignon, in a world where the distinction between the sexes is as irrelevant as food and clothing and all human ailments. There is a technical means to describe the magic of this passage (the music is built on the second inversion of the tonic chord which makes it unanchored, floating free of reality) but this is inadequate to explain the song's power: of course Goethe's words play no little part in its potency. The key of B major is one of Schubert's favourite tonalities for music of this mood. We know how much Mignon has longed for a mother's love, and the other-worldly rapture of this song reminds us of the B major passage in Vor meiner Wiege where the poet remembers a mother's kiss.

The form of the song is simplicity itself: it is almost completely strophic and the composer uses two of Goethe's verses to make one musical verse. The second and fourth verses of the poem allow Mignon more dramatic utterance: the ascending vocal line at 'Dann öffnet sich der frische Blick' is suddenly forte and doubled by octaves in the piano, the tessitura is higher and the vocal decoration on 'frische' (and later on 'Schmerz' in the fourth verse) adds a moment of recitative-like rhetoric to the proceedings and allows us to see an echo of Mignon's strength and resolve however undermined by illness. The composer allows himself one change of harmony on 'Schmerz genung' in the fourth verse: here D minor is a poignant contrast to the D major of the corresponding earlier passage. Despite the unbelievable subtlety and sophistication of the musical imagination at work, we might believe that the song was simple enough to be sung to children, as indeed it is in Goethe's novel. The accompaniment attempts nothing fancy, and dutifully hugs the vocal line for much of the time. Schubert sets 'dunkle Haus' in the first verse instead of the more familiar 'festes Haus'. Was he perhaps working from an earlier edition of the poems, or was it his own alteration? Even if this was lèse majesté, how beautiful the word 'dunkle' (dark) sounds at the bottom of the stave and in this register of the soprano voice! Apart from this, Goethe himself might have been pleased with a song which embraces many of the ideals of the older masters of Lieder, while achieving a depth of expression utterly beyond their grasp.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996

After such a cycle of songs which follows Mignon's career in the order of the novel – a cycle moreover which has been planned to make perfect sense in terms of its key progressions (B minor - E minor - B major) – it seems strange to revert to the Mignon of an earlier part of the book with another Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt. The key of A minor moreover does not easily follow the preceding B major. It seems clear from the manuscript that Schubert had already planned the three songs in the cycle before he decided to publish his sixth, and last, setting of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt as an alternative to the opening duet, and almost as an afterthought. He must have realized that it was not the easiest thing in the world for a soprano to have a tenor at her disposal, a tenor who would be willing moreover to fade into the background for the remaining two songs in the set. Here is a solo alternative which, if placed at the beginning of the cycle, also makes sense in terms of the tonalities: A minor - E minor - B major. The listener to this disc can re-programme the cycle, placing the A minor setting before Heiss mich nicht reden.

The music for this song is world-famous, the simplicity and potency of the melody a perfect mirror of Mignon's plight. It is therefore something of a surprise to discover that Schubert decided to recycle an old song, a Salis-Seewis setting he had composed ten years before (Ins stille Land, D403) and to graft on new words to a melody that already existed. Of course he made changes to the shape of the tune, and the Mignon setting, with its impassioned middle section, is a much grander creation than Ins stille Land. But the key of that song (A minor in its later versions) and the gently undulating accompaniment, as well as the overall shape of the melody, have been absorbed unashamedly into the Goethe setting. The Salis-Seewis poem has much in common with Mignon's lyric of course – it asks imploring questions about who will lead us to the land of rest. The longing of Mignon and the Harper for a beloved who lives `in der Weite' seems very similar. Both songs are about 'crossing the bar' in one way or another, and both songs are sung to the open heavens.

The piano introduction is new. This is inspired by the opening vocal melody, but it is not merely a pre-echo of what we will hear sung; the second half of the Vorspiel, with its plangent chromatic stab of pain on the flattened supertonic belongs to the piano alone. This sets the scene with grandeur and eloquence as mournful right-hand octaves (which challenge any pianist's ability to play a meaningful legato) draw us into Mignon's world, and left-hand triplets propel the song gently forward in the manner of an Italian aria. Perhaps Schubert remembered that Mignon might express herself in the musical manner of her homeland; the vocal line seems the purest bel canto, and the modulation into the relative major on the repeat of 'Weiss, was ich leide', and the little ornament on the second word seems almost Bellini-esque. The middle section of the song, however, is something that only Schubert could have written. The tune for the words 'Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude, seh' ich an's Firmament nach jener Seite' has been directly lifted from Ins stille Land. The accompaniment, however, has become much more sophisticated: rather banal quavers in the earlier setting are replaced with right-hand crotchets accented off the beat like little stabs of pain. The music for the phrase 'Ach! der mich liebt und kennt ist in der Weite' is the most powerful illustration of Schubert's ability at this stage of his career to spin the most profound magic out of the most slender resources. The accompaniment slowly alternates between a third inversion of an E7 chord (the bass a mezzo staccato dotted crotchet on a low D) with the first inversion of A minor, a low C in the bass. As in the duet setting, the distance between left hand and right somehow suggests the broad sweep of the firmament. This relatively simple device accomplishes miracles: a deep stillness descends on the song in a matter of seconds, and the voice (marked 'sehr leise') floats above the piano as if lost in the stars. The bass C falls to a low B flat and a darkness deeper yet is ushered in; a shudder of sextuplets in the right hand on a diminished seventh, the first of a chain of such chords, introduces the 'Es schwindelt mir' section which had given Schubert such trouble in earlier settings. Here he gets it exactly right: the passage is searing and exciting, but it is contained within the frame of the whole. There is a brief moment of forte, but the frisson of shock and palpitation is accomplished mainly within piano. This leads to a recapitulation which is by and large a repetition of the opening. The postlude repeats the introduction. There is every sign that Schubert has pared down his creation to the most economical form where every note, every dynamic mark, every beautifully set word, tells to the fullest effect. This is one of those masterpieces that appears to have been always a part of the song repertory. One cannot imagine a note different.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1996